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Why do Indians ignore, even accept abuse and contempt from Brown Americans.

Do Brown immi-grunts to Yummrika ‘compensate’ for years of ‘brutalization’, as victims of racism and discrimination by being negative about India? | January 2010 cartoon by Ajit Ninan

od! Save us from saviours!

There is a new breed of saviours who wish to save India – and Indians. These are the have-been immi-grunt NRIs. Mostly from Yummrika. Vastly different from the expat-NRI.

Reduced in status with the rise of India, these immi-grunt NRIs have become more shrill – and less than civilized. No longer in demand by Indians and irrelevant in US, these immi-grunt NRIs are scrapping for pieces in India and the USA.

Back Then

India has, by now, a 100-year tradition of giving consideration and respect to Indians who have studied, lived and travelled to the West.

In the past, these Indians, after their stint in the West, came back to India, to help India confront a rampaging West.

People like Gandhiji, Nehru, Jinnah.

Here and Now

What we have these days, are a different breed of Indians. These days they usually come to India for helping the West, to undermine India.

After years of discrimination and racism, they come back with a severe inferiority complex vis-à-vis the West (did someone say Jacintha Saldhana?). After such ‘warm’ treatment in the West, they compulsively feel superior to desi Indians. This contempt for desi Indians is not rooted in reality, neither sustainable nor valid.

Poor Indians!! Trying to be proud of a person who is so ungracious! Wonder whether he would react the same way if his Non Indian Colleagues sent him congratulatory mails.Serves us right.This man does not want to be identified as a person of Indian Origin and we are trying to be part of the celebration. (Comment titled ungracious man by ZAFAR DAUD | 15-Oct-2009 in Indian Express.).

Heart of the Cesspool

A prime example of this newly emerging breed is a faculty at an American university – the University of California, Berkeley. Disappointed with India, immi-grunt to the US, it is more than surprising that his tweets and blogs are focussed on running down India – usually without quantitative data or facts.

Brown Yummrikans want desi Indians to also camuflage themselves as ‘progressive’ and ‘modern’. | Cartoon by Subhani on Thursday, January 7, 2010

It is popularly believed that Indians have freedom of expression, and to some extent they do. But slowly and surely, the government is tightening the screws. The Congress party is a past master of the game, having taken over the mantle from the British. The British had a good reason to do it: to keep the Indians under control. The Congress/UPA government also has the same reason to suppress expression that it finds unpalatable.

Will Indians wake up and smell the stench of government repression and censorship? I would not hold my breath. Indians don’t have the stomach for freedom of expression. As the saying goes in Hindi, कुत्ते को घी नहीं पचता है |

What more, as a 2ndlook reader discovered, such stone-pelters will brook no dissent. When a 2ndlook reader gave facts to the contrary, Stone-Pelter Atanu Dey did not publish the dissenting view or facts for the benefit of his readers.

1. The highest number of prisoners in the world. More than 2 million of them. No country in the world has as many prisoners. Another 5 million are under some correctional restrictions – parole or probation. Total correctional population in US is 7 million.

Unprecedented.

2. Nationmaster giving details of how many people are prosecuted in the USA gives some useful STATS.

More than 2 million prosecutions each year to keep the prison pipeline fully utilized.

3. Atanu Dey with his full-time nit-picking of India (Doctor, Doctor, you think this is a case of compulsive-obsessive disorder), reveals a Freddie Mercury Syndrome. A man who hated himself so much that he hid everything about himself – and made up some story.

4. I wonder what is wrong with these Indians?

Can’t they see through this psood. Atanu. Are Indians such masochists, that they enjoy being flagellated by a charlatan like Atanu.

The post in question was about government censorship, and one person posted a comment that was abusive to me and far off the mark. It did not advance the discussion and I justifiably decided to ignore it. It began with an idiotic objection (that I had misspelled the URL of my blog — and therefore I did not know Hindi.[1]) Then it went off on a tangent. The writer later posted his comment to Rajesh Akkineni’s blog where it was published.

The guy posted a few more comments (not approved) to my blog claiming that I was censoring him. I absolutely did that. He feels that I have somehow violated his right to say whatever he wants to say on my blog. That is not so. I believe the freedom of expression is absolute[2] but that does not automatically confer any rights to anyone to say what they want on my blog.

Your freedom of expression does not confer a right on you to come into my living room and abuse me, nor does it impose a corresponding obligation on me to allow you to disturb the peace in my home with your rants. I will defend your freedom of speech but I will be damned if I let you violate my property rights. I will politely tell you to get the foxtrot off my property. Which is what I did by not approving that idiot’s (yes, he has to be an idiot if he has not figured out this simple truth) comment.

Stone-Pelter Dey claimed that Tim Put’s ‘comment that was abusive and far off the mark.’

Schiziod Browns

Unlike Stone-Pelter Atanu Dey, in all the commentary Tim did not call anyone a dog, pig, idiot, or use the ‘f’ word or the ‘b’ word. I could not isolate one instance of abuse by Tim – but Tim was plenty contemptuous of Pelter-Dey.

While Pelter-Dey seems to have reservations about readers challenging his silly commentary on India, Pelter-Dey thinks it is OK for an American (like himself) to walk into Indian drawing rooms and call them dogs.

Atanu seems to be not just ignorant – but also mixed up. In this case, New York Times (and most publications) allow dissenting opinions because of two reasons.

One – A many-sided debate is what is important. As a blogger, it is the simple logic that should have been apparent to this Stone-Pelter. But logic rarely cuts ice with Stone-Pelter Atanu Dey.

The Second – Reason why dissenting comments are usually published is etiquette. If everyone shut their ears, ears and lives to dissent, societies and nations would be reduced to rubble in no time.

Fact is bad ideas don’t live long – and good ideas don’t die easily. The British Raj died a quick death. India’s comeback is no less than stunning.

Stone-Pelters like Atanu Dey probably cannot digest that. Much like his White masters.

In the twilight of his life, Vidia wants to come back to the home of his ancestors. Should India be so petty?

Naipaul has “given” India … three books —An Area of Darkness 1964, India: A Wounded Civilization 1977, and India: A Million Mutinies Now 1990.

And so what? Those are thought-provoking books, with some good insights, but also some facile, exasperating conclusions. India of the 1960s and 1970s was static in many ways, but Naipaul can’t see the humanity and dynamism of the millions around him. Looking at people emerging from the Churchgate station he feels intimidated. In his pithy essay, “Naipaul’s India and Mine,” the late Nissim Ezekiel’s review of An Area of Darkness, the leitmotif was: “Rubbish, Mr. Naipaul.” In India: A Wounded Civilization Naipaul revealed fundamental weaknesses of India’s “borrowed institutions”, which succumbed so easily during the emergency of 1975-77. But unlike Ved Mehta’s The New India 1978, Naipaul stays gloomy. In contrast, the night of Indira Gandhi’s defeat, Mehta is out on the streets, celebrating with his family. And in India: A Million Mutinies Now, Naipaul notes the rise of Hindu militancy, but is profoundly flawed in seeing that development as positive. (via An Indian called Naipaul – Columns – livemint.com).

Jamun fruit. The tree has lossy leaves and the jamun tree yields cheap hardwood, good for railway sleepers.

Food as people

Coconuts are a pretentious fruit.

Brown outside and White inside. A ‘hard’ Brown exterior hides a thin Brown skin inside. But the flesh, seed, blood, is all White. One hard smash and they break into pieces – and show their true colours. I can eat coconuts for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I also like it at temples, where the ‘true’ colors of the coconut are exposed.

Help!

I wonder why coconuts remind me of people like Jagdish Bhagwati, Lord Meghnad Desai, Bobby Jindal, Nikki Haley, Dinesh DeSouza, etc. when I think of coconuts. Did you know that coconuts can’t stand fresh air? They go all soft, smelly, gooey, if fresh air reaches leaks into a cracked coconut.

Eggs I dislike. White outside, yellow inside, can cause acute infections (like salmonella) and full of cholesterol. Bad all round. I am not surprised when admirers describe Churchill as a good egg. Rice I like. White throughout. Unpolished rice is red on the outside.

Indian sapota - or sapodilla in English.

The fruit I can recommend easily is jamun. No real name in English – except sometimes called a black plum. It’s sweet-sour taste can make you gorge on it. Lovely Purple colour, a large seed inside and full of hidden qualities – especially the medicinal benefits.

The fruit that is usually good is the sapota (also chikoo, or sapodilla in English). Rough, brown skin, Brown through out. Simple, and unpretentious. Sapotas have a big seed inside – which helps us get many more sapotas. I like the idea – though some may see that as a waste! But you got to be careful.

Some sapotas have worms inside.

Vidia Naipaul wants to come to India more often

Vidia S. Naipaul, somehow reminds me of a sapota. I have read his India trilogy, listed above. I also read his Among the Believers!

I love Vidia! He has his history all wrong. But you can’t hold him guilty for that. Descendant of an indentured labour family, transplanted to an alien land (West Indies), immigrated into a smug and racist British society of the 1950’s, for him to become a coconut would have been easy.

That he has never become.

India, A Wounded Civilization V.S. Naipaul, originally published in 1975 is my favorite.

Vidia on India

Vidia’s diagnosis is right about India’s ‘borrowed’ institutions, and how they don’t serve India well. From a pessimistic view in the early sixties (in Area of Darkness – Book I) to his rather concerned view (in India – A Wounded Civilization– Book II) to his optimistic book (India – A Million Mutinies Now – Book III), Vidia carefully tracks India’s struggle to throw off the ‘borrowed’ institutions. Naipaul’s theme in Book II, about Indian ‘retreat’ is right – though again, his history, derived from a colonial narrative, has gaping holes.

He carefully tracks, for instance, in Book II, how the Shiv Sena became a force by forming small self-help groups and cooperative institutions in Mumbai. Recently the Sena did a huge blood donation camp. They came up due to such campaigns – and they lose votes with their rabid talk and extortionate activities. Vidia’s books demonstrate how Shiv Sena’s marginalisation has happened with their marginal activities.

His trenchant journalism is good at diagnosis, bad at history, useless at prescription. Vidia’s fault is his history and his confused politics. Dimly, in the recesses of his mind, Vidia remains a sapota. Living in Britain, brought up in West Indies is not the best way to discover his Indic past. To his credit, he tries. Very hard.

He is bothered about the country of his ancestors.

VS Naipaul and his mistress, Margaret Murray, in the early 1970s. Photo from the Washington Post.

A son wants to come home – more often

In the twilight of his life, Vidia wants to come back to the home of his ancestors. More often.

To someone who has kept a long and lonely vigil, frequently shouting सावधान saavdhaan, we should be more welcoming! We shouldn’t resent him for waking us up or disturbing our sleep. Everything said, Vidia has never been spiteful.

Vidia, any time you want to come to the home of your ancestor’s, there will be at least one man who will welcome you.

And many Indians who will welcome you, even though they don’t know you or your writing. Or your Nobel prize.

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